This has been a year of great computer games. Computers are finally powerful enough to respond to the most creative fancies. CD-ROM drives store enough words and pictures to make a whole world on a monitor screen. SVGA video cards add living color to any desktop.
Carmen Sandiego's adventures are bigger and better, especially on CDROM. They're in all the local computer software stores. SimFARM and SimHEALTH challenge SimCITY fans with SVGA equipped 386s to greater heights.Microsoft followed Flight Simulator (one of the first great adult entertainments for the PC) with Space Simulator. But you don't need our help finding these new wrinkles on old favorites. Instead, we'd like to remind you, this holiday shopping season, of three great packages we found this year whose makers didn't have the clout - or the moolah - to turn them into household names.
Bright Star's A.J.'s World of Discovery is so chock-full of entertainments for four- to eight-year-olds, it's no wonder Sierra On-Line bought Bright Star. A clock helps teach time. Disappearing blocks train the reflexes. Fading animals teach observation. Other games teach beginning reading and arithmetic.
Only out for IBM-compatibles (with or without Windows), the program lists at $50, with excellent add-on disks at $20 apiece. Owning a good sound board heightens enjoyment. If you can't find it locally, phone Sierra at 800-757-7707.
Youngsters who can't keep an aquarium going can tend a whole world of fish with Odell Down Under. You start by helping a small fish learn its way around Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
First it just pokes around, finding food, trying to stay out of trouble. But trouble finds you. If you're clever at keeping it alive and healthy, you get to the next level, controlling a slightly bigger fish. And on up the food chain and through three modes of play.
The program is packed with information about tropical fish. You have to read and remember it to keep the fish alive. It builds thinking and planning skills, too. We'd buy it for anyone eight or older.
It lists at $60 for Windows or Macintosh computers. On IBM-compatibles, you need DOS 5, 256-color video and 4M RAM - but no sound board. For more information, phone MECC at 800-685-6322, extension 549.
The Greatest Paper Airplanes turns a universal sport into high art. Using its 25 step-by-step animated filmstrips, virtually anyone over three can learn how to make simple to sophisticated paper airplane designs. Included is plane-making paper complete with lines showing where to fold.
Onscreen, in virtual 3-D, you're shown how to crease and fold to make flightworthy gliders, darts, jets, SSTs, even starships. You can control the filmstrip's frame speed, replay steps, zoom in for a better look, and even rotate the on-film airplane-in-the-making.
The program also has sections teaching why planes fly and where paper-folding comes from - though not in words little kids can read. It only runs on IBM-compatibles with Windows. Kitty Hawk Software's suggested list is $40, but they're selling it for $30 through Christmas. For more info, phone 800-777-5745.
If your family owns a CD-ROM drive (plus Windows if you're on an IBM-compatible), get your favorite toddlers Little Monster at School and Arthur's Birthday. They're the sixth and seventh in Living Books' excellent collection of interactive animated stories for tikes and early graders.
These and the other Living Books for Windows and the Mac, are distributed by Broderbund. They cost about $40 each in local computer stores. The Windows versions are no fun without a good sound card - but if you own one, you'll find out fast why we say that sound is the best add-on ever devised for educational computing.
Does your favorite home computer lack a CD-ROM drive? That's the first thing we'd put on our holiday gift list. Here are some hints for choosing a drive, suggested by "The CD-ROM Book" by Steve Bosak, Jeffrey Sloma, and Dave Gibbons (Que, second edition $39.99).
Get one whose data transfer rate is at least 300KB/s. That should hold you for the next year or more. The higher the transfer rate, the better the sound and the smoother a program's animation and video will look.
Try for a drive with an average access time of 350ms. or less. This number hints at how long you'll wait between pictures. The lower the access time, the faster the drive finds new data.
Finally, in choosing between two equal drives, select the one that has its own memory cache (also called a data buffer). The bigger the buffer the smoother sounds and pictures will move along onscreen. The book recommends at least a 256K cache, but that's the biggest most of today's CD-ROM drives offer.
Be sure that the CD-ROM drive you buy is equipped with a SCSI-2 (not just SCSI) interface or with ASPI (Advanced SCSI Programming Interface).
They offer the best compatibility with today's and next year's computers.
Most important, if you're buying for an IBM-compatible computer, select a drive that compliies with the MPC Level 2 standard. It'll even play PhotoCDs if you have the right additional tools. MPC2 runs only under Microsoft Windows.